Monday, July 11, 2011

I don't know how many of you have been watching the Murdoch
phone-hacking scandal as it grows and digging up the tidbits, but if you
have, you already know that the only place not to bother looking is at
any of the Murdoch-owned properties in the USA, including the Wall
Street Journal and even more particularly Fox News.

This reached hilarious depths this weekend on Fox's own
media-analysis show, wherein they discussed everything even vaguely
media-related EXCEPT the Murdoch scandal. The big focus was on the Casey
Anthony trial and the coverage around it -- and even on that, the
discussion was disingenuous and dishonest.Media Matters has more:

This weekend, Fox News Watch, Fox News Channel's media
criticism show, covered the following issues: The media's coverage of
the Casey Anthony trial verdict; MSNBC's suspension of Mark Halperin for
making vulgar comments about the president; the media's role in the
Dominique Strauss-Kahn case; the cancellation of In the Arena, Eliot
Spitzer's CNN television show; and Vice President Joe Biden's new
Twitter account.

The glaring omission from this list is any mention of the shuttering
of the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World, billed as the largest
English-language newspaper in the world, which published its last
edition today. The paper is folding following allegations that it hacked
the voicemails of a slain teen girl in the United Kingdom, an action
which potentially impeded the police investigation and gave the girl's
family false hope that she was still alive. There are also allegations
that family members of soldiers who died in the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars and families of victims of the 2005 subway bombings have been phone
hacked.

CAL THOMAS: Anybody want to bring up the subject we're not talking about today for the -- for the [online] streamers?

JAMES PINKERTON: Sure. Go ahead, Cal!

THOMAS: No, go ahead, Jim.

[LAUGHTER]

THOMAS: I'm not going to touch it.

JUDY MILLER (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): With a ten foot [inaudible].

And the scandal news got even bigger today, with the possibility of prosecution for News Corp officials in the United States looming as well:

But Murdoch may soon have bigger problems on his hands.
Legal experts told the AP today that his company could face criminal
prosecution in the U.S. for his U.K. papers’ alleged bribery of British
police officers, which would be a violation of the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act (FCPA). According to the the Department of Justice, “The
FCPA prohibits payments made in order to assist the firm in obtaining or
retaining business.”

Thus the papers’ use of bribery to obtain
information which helped sell newspapers could fall under the act’s
purview. And even though the bribery occurred entirely in Britian,
NewsCorp is an American company, incorporated in Delaware, and held
accountable for its foreign subsidiary’s actions. Even if the
corporation wasn’t directly involved in bribery, it could be found in
violation of the law for turning a “blind eye.”

The legal experts told the AP they would be surprised if the
Securities and Exchange Commission and the DoJ have not already opened
investigations into the matter and said the decision to shutter News of
the World was potentially an attempt to limit Murdoch and NewsCorp’s
legal exposure.

Meanwhile, as something of an absurd endnote, did anyone notice that
the Fox News crew tut-tutted those generic "media" figures who decided
ahead of time that Casey Anthony was guilty and had convicted her in the
media, most notably Nancy Grace.

But the same was true -- in spades -- at Fox News, where the running
assumption all along was that Anthony would be convicted, deservedly so.
Indeed, check out the fifteen minutes of coverage on Fox just prior to
the announcement of the verdict on Monday.

Funny that the Fox media-analysis crew didn't bother to mention that
these people were wrong, wrong, wrong. Because at Fox, being wrong isn't
a bug. It's a feature.

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.